


Cede

by heartswells



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Communication, Coping, Grounding, Healing, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Support, Trauma, Trauma Recovery, Trust, Vulnerability, emotional flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:54:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23222836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartswells/pseuds/heartswells
Summary: From his seat on the bed, Erik looked up and met Ryan’s eyes, and promised him compassion and safety through the softness of his gaze. Then, with deliberate slowness, he shut them, and as he rendered himself blind, silent, and still, Erik ceded control over his body to Ryan.
Relationships: Erik Johnson/Ryan Graves
Comments: 11
Kudos: 59





	Cede

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: past (non-descriptive) sexual abuse & emotional flashbacks.

Ryan’s anxiety was palpable; it infested the room like a swarm of roaches, scurrying out of his chest in grotesque hordes, filthy and hideous. It was contagious and suffocating, and Erik drew a deep, fortifying inhale to recenter his sense of self and remind himself of his own autonomy. He could empathize with Ryan, but he could not allow his empathy to shift into emulation. Bearing Ryan’s anxiety in silence felt callous and anti-instinctual, and Erik had to clamp his tongue between his teeth to tame the unruly compulsion to speak. Selflessly, he wanted to allay Ryan’s pain because he did not deserve to suffer. Selfishly, Erik wanted to allay Ryan’s pain because he loathed to acknowledge the terror that had caused it. However, Erik would not allow his own cowardice to deny Ryan the right to heal. He would force himself to endure the moment and all it’s horrific implications, and he would confront it hand-in-hand with him.

  
  


Sex was a struggle, defined by panic, helplessness, and dissociation. Erik did not believe sex a necessity, and he was not perturbed by the idea of omitting it from their relationship, but it upset Ryan. Ryan yearned for touch, for pleasure, and for physical connection; more than anything, Ryan yearned to live a life where his decisions and experiences were neither controlled nor limited by the people who had hurt him. 

  
  


This was not a problem that they would likely solve alone, and Erik had been carefully nudging Ryan towards therapy, but Erik had also pursued his own research. A recovery forum he discovered online had suggested ways to place control back into Ryan’s hands. Helplessness defined Ryan’s fear because, in the past, he had been denied the right to decision-making, denied the right to assert himself, and denied the right to access his own autonomy. Critical to Ryan’s healing was reestablishing Ryan’s belief that he was capable of controlling his own sexual decisions. Thus, Erik would allow Ryan to make all initiations while he responded with gentle passivity, deliberately designing an environment in which Ryan would be able to safely explore his sexuality and in which Erik would be able to reinforce and emphasize feelings of trust by offering his own vulnerability. 

  
  


From his seat on the bed, Erik looked up and met Ryan’s eyes where he stood trembling before him, and promised him compassion and safety through the softness of his gaze. Then, with deliberate slowness, he shut them, and as he rendered himself blind, silent, and still, Erik ceded control over his body to Ryan.

  
  


Ryan did not immediately move when Erik shut his eyes, so Erik waited patiently, counting his own breaths, straining to maintain his serenity against the waves of anxiety Ryan was emitting. In that moment, Erik felt an arduous awareness of his own status and physicality—overbearing, aggressive, rugged, powerful—and he began to doubt the plausibility of their plan. No matter how submissive Erik behaved, it was an undeniable truth that he possessed the physicality to do everything Ryan feared, and an existential sense of fear at the futility of healing seized him.

  
  


Erik inhaled, and he exhaled, and the weight of trauma bore heavy in his lungs.

  
  


In for four, out for eight.

  
  


In for four, out for eight. 

  
  


When Ryan finally leaned down to kiss Erik, it startled him. Ryan did no more than press his lips against Erik’s and breathe, and there was a terribly awkward stillness to it that made Erik wonder if Ryan even knew how to lead a kiss. Ryan settled his hands on Erik’s shoulders with an overly self-conscious gentleness, as if he feared his own strength and size, and Erik’s arms flexed as he resisted the desire to pull Ryan into his arms and cherish him in his embrace. Over and over, he reminded himself that this was its own form of intimacy, that there was as much tenderness in restraint as there was in abandon. This was about healing, not heat.

  
  


Ryan began moving his lips in clumsy little mumbling motions against Erik’s—and _oh_ , he didn’t know how to lead a kiss. Erik followed the motions, utterly and helplessly endeared, desperate to savor the soft, trusting vulnerability of Ryan’s inexperience. Erik could have pressed back and swept him away, but this was an invitation into Ryan’s world, an invitation to know exactly how he craved to touch, and Erik wanted nothing more than to become lost in it. Ryan licked at the bottom of his lip curiously and attempted to sidle closer before making a frustrated little huff. He pushed against Erik’s shoulder, and Erik followed it, sliding to the middle of the mattress and lying back. 

  
  


Ryan’s head spun as Erik did so. He was terrified to have Erik so pliant and quiet beneath him. He was unsure that he was worthy of such trust. He feared that he wasn’t capable of bearing such responsibility. He feared that too much abuse had rendered him incapable of doing anything but replicating his own history of mistreatment onto Erik. But Erik was trusting him, and if Ryan could not generate his own sense of self-trust, then he would take refuge in the trust that Erik offered him and cloak himself in that instead.

  
  


Ryan climbed onto the bed and straddled Erik’s waist. Both of them were still fully clothed, so Ryan ran his hands down Erik’s chest over his shirt to test the sensation. He felt comfortable touching through the fabric, so he slid his fingers underneath the hem of Erik’s shirt to see if that would feel okay too. His fingers ghosted over the soft skin on Erik’s waist, and Erik huffed. Fearing he’d done something wrong, Ryan’s gaze shot to Erik’s face, but, to his delight, he found Erik biting back ticklish giggles, and the silly grin twisting Erik’s face eased him. 

  
  


Ryan leaned back down and kissed Erik again, caressing his cheek with his hand. Beneath his fingertips was the warm dewiness of flushed skin, riddled with patterns of stubble and scars and age, and it felt less like skin beneath his fingers and more like love. He broke the kiss to shuffle down and brush his lips along Erik’s neck, searching for the places that would make his heart skip. Anxiety surged through him, and he worried that Erik would become bored and judge his incompetence as he skillessly dragged his lips along Erik’s skin, but when he mouthed at the juncture of Erik’s pulse, Erik gasped, and Ryan settled there, reassured by the skips in his breath. 

  
  


Ryan returned to Erik’s lips, and he indexed his internal feelings. It wasn’t quite accurate to say he was “enjoying himself” because of the amount of anxiety that possessed him, but he also did not feel critically unsafe. He was facing a fear, which was inherently uncomfortable, but he didn’t feel unstable, didn’t feel afraid of tipping over the edge in an unrecoverable way. He wasn’t aroused, and that did frustrate him, but he reminded himself that this was a process, that it could take time for that to be a possibility. Maybe he couldn’t get off, but he could feel Erik beneath him, and it sounded just as good to get Erik off as it would himself, so Ryan reached a shaky hand down towards the button of Erik’s pants and nervously halted their kiss to ask for consent.

  
  


“Ryan, you know that you don’t have to do this, right?” Always, Erik reminded him that Ryan didn’t owe him anything.

  
  


“I want to,” Ryan said. He meant it, he really did _want_ to, but he was afraid—afraid of being afraid, afraid of panicking, afraid that if he tried and failed it meant that he never would be able to try again.

  
  


“Okay,” Erik said softly. He opened his eyes and searched Ryan’s gaze. Satisfied by the sincerity he saw reflected in Ryan’s eyes, he simply reminded him, “It’s okay to change your mind at any time, Ryan. I promise.”

  
  


Erik closed his eyes again. From anyone else, that statement would not have felt true, but Ryan knew that Erik meant it. It was always okay to stop. Though Ryan was never happy to need to, Erik’s patient reassurances had begun to genuinely instill that belief in him, and in that way, in that subtle shift in beliefs, had shown that Ryan was already in the process of healing.

  
  


Ryan fumbled with the button of Erik’s pants, unable to abate the shaking of his hands. When he finally pulled Erik’s cock from his pants, he wasn’t all the way hard, and Ryan was struck by a mind-blanking anxiety. He couldn’t remember what to do. He feared Erik’s nonexistent judgement and anger; feared that he would be told he wasn’t good enough; feared that incompetency would drive Erik to _take_. Ryan could feel himself spiraling, could feel the shrieking caught in his lungs, could feel himself leaving his body, could feel it all flooding back in emotions so viscerally and intensely akin to the ones _they_ used to make him feel that it became difficult to discern _where_ and _when_ he was. The disgust, the terror, the helplessness, it was all so exact that he felt transferred through time and—

  
  


“Ryan.” 

  
  


That was his name, and that was _Erik’s_ voice. 

  
  


“Erik.” He said Erik’s name back to ground himself, to remind him who he was with, and then closed his eyes and began rambling.

  
  


“It’s 2020. I’m in Colorado. My name is Ryan. Your name is Erik. I play for the Avalanche. The year is 2020 and the defense contains Cale Makar, Sam Girard…” And he continued on, reciting facts of the now until he could feel every part of his body in full again and he was sure of his placement in space and time. 

  
  


When he opened his eyes, Erik was watching him.

  
  


“I’m so—”

  
  


“Hey, no apologies, remember? It’s okay,” Erik soothed. He tried to prevent Ryan from apologizing in bed, from even finishing his sentences because he feared so greatly the damage done by allowing him to do so. 

  
  


“How do you feel?” Erik asked gently.

  
  


“I’m not sure,” Ryan admitted, and then frustrated, he added, “It didn’t work. I still freaked out.”

  
  


There was an unsaid _I’m sorry_ in his tone that made Erik bite back a sigh.

  
  


“There’s not going to be a one time that fixes this, Ryan. You can’t fix years of injury in one day. Today we learned that we need to go slower. This is a good format for us to keep trying in, but we need to break things down into smaller steps. We have a better idea of where your boundaries lay now, more insight to your triggers. That’s progress, right?”

  
  


“Right,” Ryan said with a frown.

  
  


“Right what?” Erik asked, raising an eyebrow.

  
  


“Right, that’s progress,” he parroted, ever dismayed by Erik’s obsession with verbal affirmations. 

  
  


“Do you want a hug?”

  
  


“No,” Ryan mumbled. He wished he did, but the thought of touch was too much.

  
  


“Okay, thank you for answering honestly. It’s going to be okay, Ryan. There’s no endgame here, no goal. This is a journey, and we're in the exploration phase right now. I’m proud of you, and you should be proud of yourself. You stayed mindful. You identified your feelings. You grounded yourself. That’s progress, Ryan.”

  
  
"That's progress," Ryan said, this time not as a placation, but as a conscious decision to reclaim control from his past over his future.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm not completely satisfied with this, but honestly, i can't bear to read it again. trauma fics rot like fruit in my drafts—edible for a week, sickening on the next. but as always, thank you, moey, for encouraging me through this fic and assuring me of my work. i love you.


End file.
